Report Recommends Whom to Sacrifice During a Pandemic

A group of physicians have created guidelines specifying which people to avoid treating during a pandemic, or a global epidemic of a disease such as the flu. The guidelines are to be published in this month’s Chest, the American College of Chest Physicians’ journal.

According to The Associated Press: “The idea is to try to make sure that scarce resources—including ventilators, medicine and doctors and nurses—are used in a uniform, objective way, task force members said.”

Groups the study recommends not treating, according to AP, include people over 85; people with “severe trauma”; patients over the age of 60 who have been severely burned; those with severe mental impairment, such as advanced Alzheimer’s disease; and people with a severe chronic disease.

A virus found in birds, H5N1 has infected and killed more than 200 people around the world in the past few years, leading to concerns about a pandemic and planning for such a possibility.

The guidelines won praise from a paramedic who runs the blog Avian Flu Diary.

“Having guidelines spelled out, and endorsed by major universities, medical centers, and government agencies is an important step in our pandemic preparedness,” wrote FLA_MEDIC.

The pandemic triage report, which appears in the journal Chest, is a “political minefield and legal minefield,” says Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University, in an AP interview. Though rationing would be a reality in a pandemic, he said, “there are some real ethical concerns here.”

In Bali, Indonesia, 5,000 people took part in a drill simulating the response to a large-scale bird flu outbreak. Approximately half the worldwide bird flu deaths have occurred in Indonesia, where 107 people have died, according to the International Herald Tribune. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention paid for the drill.

The blog, Avian Flu Diary, is written by a paramedic in Florida who says, “While I applaud the creation of this triage list, and appreciate the difficult decisions that its creators had to make, I suspect we will need further guidance in the face of a severe pandemic.”

The World Health Organization explains that influenza pandemics and bird flu are not the same thing. The bird flu, as its name suggests, is found in birds. Influenza pandemics are flu viruses that have adapted to affect humans and can spread rapidly across borders. This piece offers other information about influenza and pandemics.